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TI: You know, earlier you mentioned that you lived in a neighborhood where there weren't other Japanese.

KK: No.

TI: So who did you and the boys play with?

KK: Oh, we had lots of friends, all Caucasian. There was one boy that was, and I've tried to remember his name and I can't remember his name, but he played with me quite a lot, and we played house, you know, you're Dad, I'm Mom, these are the babies, the dolls and everything, and we'd play house on the porch and all. And he was very nice for a long time, especially before school started, the two of us would spend a lot of time together. And then there was a brother and sister who lived in the apartments down on the corner of the street, and they were Catholic, Irish, and they took tap dancing, and once I started to go to school, sometimes I would take a route that went by the Catholic school and the three of us would come home together, but that's how I got into the Catholic church, and I got to see, you know, learned all about Catholicism through them.

TI: So it sounds like you took on some of your father's characteristics of just being curious and kind of just going in and learning what you can about different things. So how would the neighbors describe your family? 'Cause here you have a large, you know, Japanese American family in a neighborhood where there aren't that many Japanese, and lots of kids, so their kids probably knew your siblings and you, but how did they view the Uno family?

KK: I have no idea, because we're just so accepted, you know. All the kids played together, we just were... and, like, my immediate neighbor, they had a piano in their house, and so the girls -- they were all older -- and they would let me in the house and let me play on the piano. I couldn't play piano, but they let me tinker around, and they were very nice. They were, I think Polish, but every so often, he, the father would make spaghetti, noodles, really make noodles, and they'd always share with us. And then on the other side was a lady who was a widow. And she was haole, white, and very nice lady, and she asked me in for tea. And she would serve me cookies, and we'd have tea and we'd talk, and that's how I learned about how to be a lady, in society. [Laughs] And she taught me a lot, and she was very nice. In fact, she ended up giving me a nice little tea, glass tea set, which I think one of my daughters has now.

TI: So growing up in that environment, what was done, or how did you view being Japanese? Did your parents ever talk about you being Nihonjin, or Japanese?

KK: We just knew it, because my mother would speak Japanese, my mother and father would speak Japanese. My mother would read to me in Japanese and sing to me in Japanese. So I knew I was Japanese, but it didn't go outside the house, you know what I mean? Once I was outside the house, I was like everybody else in the neighborhood.

TI: But when you, when you realized you are Japanese, what does that mean to you, growing up? Did that mean that you were different in any way, or is it just that your parents spoke a different language? I mean, you grew up in such an integrated fashion, I'm just curious, you know, what did Japanese mean to you?

KK: Being Japanese meant that... well, it gave us some internal pride to be Japanese, and so you had to watch your language, you had to watch how you act and everything, you know. So I think that did a lot on how we reacted to other people, and, in the neighborhood, in what we did. When I was growing up, I didn't really feel different from my neighbors. They didn't make me feel Japanese, they didn't make me feel different. You knew you were different, because you'd look around and, you know, you look different than everybody, but we went to places together, and the community playground and pool that we went to, we just went. Nobody ever said we were Japanese or anything. We never felt, never felt left out or anything.

TI: How about things like Japanese language? Did your parents ever encourage that by, you mentioned your mother speaking Japanese to you, but things like Japanese language school, or anything like that?

KK: A little bit, they tried to teach me at home. No, we didn't go to Japanese language school, 'cause that cost money and we were very poor, and it meant going into Japanese Town and we lived quite a ways out. We lived on Thirty-Eighth Street and Japanese Town was First Street. [Interruption] When I was growing up, I didn't really, I knew I was different, I knew I was Japanese, but it wasn't anything like, you know, you did anything different from the other kids, you just did, went along with the other kids and did what they did and played with them. It was a nice time. It wasn't until the war started that, that things changed.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.